1. In what ways does your product
use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media
products?
2. Conventions for a pop magazine aimed at
teenage girls
• Masthead: bright, bold font so it stands out
• Main cover line: also bright and bold so it stands out as it’s the most
important story
• Barcode
• Colour scheme: girly colours such as pink, purple, blue, white
• Main image: normally a young female pop singer
• Music related article: usually about the person who was used for the
main image
• Puffs and plugs promoting something
• Free posters that are featured inside, normally a popular female singer
or boy band
3. Masthead
For my masthead I looked at the ‘top of the pops’ magazine. I found it was mostly
bright, informal font. Also I saw that most mastheads go the whole way across the page. I
used these ideas for my masthead. Both ‘top of the pops’ and ‘we love pop’ have used
the colour pink and the word ‘pop’ this easily shows the reader the magazine is aimed at
girls and the genre is pop music.
However ‘top of the pops’ haven’t used capital letters but I have and they put a outline on
their writing but I didn’t. I have used two different colours on my masthead like on the ‘top
of the pops’.
My
masthead
4. Colour scheme
From looking at the other pop music magazines aimed at teenage girls, I decided
to use: pink, purple, white and blue for my house colours. They are all bright
which makes them stand out and makes the magazine look informal and
fun, which suits the target audience. Using these colours someone looking at the
magazine could easily work out who its targeted at.
My front cover
5. Main image
• Some magazines choose to have the popular boy band at that time for their main
image. This is because girls who the magazine is targeted at are normally obsessed
with them and makes them want to buy the magazine. However I went against this
idea and chose to use a female pop singer. I think teenage girls look up to pop stars
because they want to look and be like them. I think it’s likely for girls to buy a
magazine that has their role model on the front.
6. Contents page
My magazine contents page is quite similar to the one from Top of the Pops
magazine as I thought it looked effective. As most magazines do, I’ve followed on
the colour scheme from my magazine front cover, using the bright pink, purple
and blue. Like Top of the Pops I’ve laid my contents page out in a grid method
because it looks formal but still fits the fun look of the magazine. Also like Top of
the Pops I put a photo of the front cover with the numbers to the pages so the
reader can easily find they page they are interested in.
My contents
page
8. Conventions of double page spreads
• From looking at the other three dps you can see they always normally have
a big image one side and an article or writing about the person in the photo
the other side. You also see that they always have bright, bold font at the
told of the page telling you a bit about what you’re going to read. Also some
of the dps carry on the colour scheme from the front cover and contents
page if that double page spread is the main story of the magazine.
• Therefore on my dps I used the left side for a photo/poster of the main pop
singer who was the main image on my front cover. On the other side I had
an interview of the main singer. As the pop singer was on the front page, the
readers are especially going to look at this page because it’s the most
important. This is the reason I used the same colour scheme as I did for the
front cover and dps.
